The M10 and the Corporal Richard Blake character pose with copies of the first edition book.

First Edition published by The Literate Show Press, May 2015.

Cover design and layout by Marie Sheridan.

Cover illustration by the author.

READER REVIEWS

“Ara, your book was excellent and I had a terrific time reading it. I found the plot riveting from beginning to end and as I reached the conclusion I wished the story had been longer. A good measure of a book is whether the characters have been developed to a point where you come to care about them and wonder what happened to them after you finish reading the book. Given that measure, your book succeeds beautifully. Literally every character was interesting and believable.”

–M.F., Dominican Republic

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“I was already reading Rachel Joyce’s quite thick book, “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” which was very emotional. Then I started to read your novelette in parallel. As I noticed the story plays during World War II, I had a kind of blockade to read it. This part of our bad German history is hard to bear and I always have to find a “right time” to read books about it.

“At the beginning of your story the special English “war vocabulary” was sometimes hard for me to understand but then I was so fascinated by the story that I could read it fluently.

“There were two turning points where I expected a totally different storyline but the book went into a surprising and exciting direction.

“I was deeply touched by the story. The American troops with their internal loyalty to one another; the phenomenon of collecting “war trophies” or souvenirs; but most of all (soldier X’s) story.

“Anyhow, I am deeply impressed and with a few words: Congratulations Ara. This is a very good, heartfelt book!”

–Ms. M.S., Hamburg Germany

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“Congrats on your most recent literary effort! It’s obviously a quick read, but I have to say that the imaginative story line was such that as I read, it developed into one of those novels that you simply can’t put down. Good stuff; very creative! Don’t sell yourself short with the “novelette” descriptor when you’ve created a very interesting and riveting story.”

–A.P., Arizona

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“Just read Ara’s book, THE FIERY WINDS. The story pulled me in from the first page and the pacing of the story was excellent. There’s a human element that Ara adds to how the characters interact and respond to the tragedies of war that everyone can identify with at one time in their life. The descriptions of war reflect many of the inner descriptions we can apply to ourselves.”

–S.M., US Army (retired)

MAKING THE COVER ILLUSTRATION:

At the end of the novel, there are several pages that detail the day-by-day making of the diorama that was built for the cover shoot to THE FIERY WINDS. Below are the in-process photographs that, when used with the text in the book, give a better idea of the method and materials that were used. The diorama was constructed and photographed by the author. The camera used was a SONY NEX 5N with the Carl Zeiss FE 1.8/55 lens.

The diorama was built on a plywood base.

Paper towels soaked in a water and Elmer’s Glue solution make the mountainside.

Set to dry for a week.

Covered in modeler’s clay.

Painted with artist’s acrylics.

Painting and adding sand and gravel to the paint.

Setting aside to dry.

More painting, adding rocks, gravel, powders and scale grass to the paint and water mix.

Using thick paint to create the ridge that Corporal Blake will crouch behind.

The finished set piece, ready for staging with figures.

Here’s the photograph that was used for the cover. It was manipulated with four programs and over fifty steps to become the cover illustration for THE FIERY WINDS novel.

A comparison. With editing, the mountainside turns into a pasture, to suit the novel’s Italian setting. The mountain, when transformed with edge detection, creates a surreal background, and suggests a nearby grove of trees.

This is how straight edge detection looks right out of the Irfanview program–almost. I’ve used MS Paint to fill in the stars with white. The edge detection image is stark, but provides a good basis for cloning, dodge and burn, merging, and other effects.

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About Ara Hagopian's The LITERATE Show

For over thirty years, I have enjoyed drawing beautiful shapes and writing complementary stories. The imagery tends to focus on our place in the world—whomever or whatever we may be.
I am influenced by Twentieth Century history—I read vintage magazines, books and letters. Inspiration comes from visualizing human achievement and personal interaction—derived from people, places and things which may be obscure, but never insignificant.
My pen-and-ink THE MAGNIFICENT RECOVERY was selected by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for their 2008 summer art auction.